


two souls

by secondreckoning



Series: The Knight and the Witch [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood and Injury, F/F, Halloween, Junkenstein's Revenge, Witch Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Witch of the Wilds, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 18:22:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16539758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secondreckoning/pseuds/secondreckoning
Summary: A century or so ago, Fareeha Amari died on the battlefield.An hour or so ago, the Witch of the Wilds started digging.





	two souls

**Author's Note:**

> A late Halloween piece feat. remixed Halloween Terror lore, grave-robbing and a raven.

_ i. _  
_The Knight, wounded_

 

The knight’s blood seeped into the dirt and nourished a future generation of growth.

Fareeha Amari—steadfast warrior, loyal knight, just-hearted protector—possessed a keen mind. She knew she was dying. The remnants of her future gleamed before her as her opponent’s flail whistled near her weak hip, and regret burned through her as the flail’s head crashed into her side.

Now, lying upon trampled grass and blood-soaked earth, she saw her future cast and set in steel.

Night hung high above her, the stars beyond reach and yet closer than ever. Fareeha lifted a gauntlet-bound hand and lay it across her front. Little good it did. Pain seized her chest. The flail—as flails were wont to do—collided with her left side, collapsed her breastplate, which in turn, with nowhere else to go, collapsed the side of her ribcage. Rib bones, finicky, frail things they were, snapped in all sorts of ways. Some, Fareeha surmised, must've punched into her lung—she struggled to bring air into her lungs—and some others punctured skin. Hot blood pooled along her side and found its way out of her breastplate somewhere along her armpit.

As a page, a gardener once told the secret to the royal rose beds: at the turn of each planting season, the gardener requested useless odds and ends from the abattoir and lay them deep in the dirt.

Fareeha’s first thought when she hit the ground was how her death fed Baron Friedrich von Adler’s lawn. This was not the first time she found herself in a state of dying—she took, depending on the point of view, either a well or poorly placed arrow to the neck two years prior—but as the battle raged around her, she suspected this one was a bit more permanent than the others.

Two brothers, two von Adlers and two divergent representations of the same original family crest. Two armies, armed with steel and nerves, clashing against each other over one piece of land.

And one all-important title.

Baron Ernst von Adler’s army—Fareeha’s army—struck at dawn. A perfect day for it, she agreed. Early autumn, with hard grounds from the summer, but before the rain and chill took hold. No heavy sun to smoulder them, no rain and mud to mire them down.

The other brother expected them, of course, and met his brother’s army with his own. Fareeha flew the blue and gold pennant of _her_ Baron, the rightful Baron of Adler, as she rode into battle. Blue as a new day, she likened it to, a better day; and gold as richness: richness in wealth, in wheat, in honour. Before her, the opposing army flew red and silver: crimson as a cruel dawn lined with stingy clouds.

Fires burned from early on, and after the first sting of smoke in her nose, Fareeha adjusted. She pushed it aside and moved on.

Lying supine upon the ground, she struggled to rid herself of its stench. Thick wafts of smoke, drifting high above, cloaked the stars from her gaze and the thin wisps along the ground smarted her failing airways.

 _I need air_ , she thought. Fareeha reached out a hand and groped for her sword.

If she rose, maybe—

If she got her feet under her—

Fareeha tipped her head to the side and scanned the grass. Metal shone back in the shifting torchlight. _There_. Hand outstretched, she reached—

Convulsive coughs gripped Fareeha’s chest. She drew her hand back and pressed it against her mouth. Coughs rode up her throat and tore at her lungs. Fareeha braced her other arm uselessly against her chest and weathered them. Blood flecked her hand and a metallic tang coated her mouth. She thought herself breathless before—well, now she lived the descriptor.

One hand fell and gripped the earth. How was there so very much air around her? How come it refused to cooperate with her lungs?

Fareeha’s fingers dug into the ground. _No! I'_ _m good for one more fight._

Wind gusted against her face, sweat-drenched from effort now, and blew smoke away. Fareeha lay, gasping and breathless, in clear air beneath a clear bright moon.

 _I'_ _m not done,_ she thought, desperate, as her heart gave a sluggish pound inside her broken chest. _We'_ _re not done._

Fareeha needed to stand up. Baron Ernst needed to bring his brother and all his atrocities to justice.

Fareeha needed to finish the battle.

Fareeha needed to help the town rebuild in the aftermath.

Fareeha needed to speak to Ana again. Questions lay unanswered between Fareeha and her mother.

Fareeha needed to see her mother again—

Amidst the clash of swords and the high din of battle, Fareeha slipped quietly into the dark.

 

 _ ii. _  
_The Witch, grave-robbing_

 

The Witch of the Wilds' spade pierced the ground and upturned a layer of grass.

Angela Ziegler—once a village healer, once a trusted mentor, but always, _always_ a witch—possessed a desire for a body. A dead one, which she thought fair. She knew the fallen of the Adler Civil War lay under the far western slice of the forest, interred where they lay a century or so before. Remnants of the past gleamed here and there in snatches of moonlight. Half a shield, a bit of thigh bone, a ruined vambrace peeked out of holes—the witch left a mess in her wake. Sweat slicked her brow and her muscles burned as she hefted up another spadeful of earth and overturned it. The pile to the right of her hole grew. She thought nothing of filling them back in after. The upset ground was sign enough and neither the townsfolk nor Baron von Adler himself ever thought her up to any good regardless.

Now, lying before her in gaping maw of earth, she saw a rust-eaten helmet and a skull.

Wind blew through the trees and pasted loose hair to her face. Its cold kiss stung her brow and arms, her sleeves pulled to the elbows. This was dirty work, after all. In the mottled shadows of the forest, the skull grinned up at her.

Angela heaved a sigh through her nose. Some of the tension in her chest loosened.

_Will you be the one?_

She dropped the spade against the dirt pile and crouched at the makeshift grave. “What do you think, Böhnli?” she asked the dark branches above.

In response, the raven gave a throaty caw, an answer neither here nor there.

“If you think so.” She leaned forward on the balls of her feet. “Skull looks intact. Good sign. They’re so _directionless_ when someone’s knocked their brains in. I’m always repeating myself.”

From the shadows of the branch, Böhnli cawed back.

Angela waved a hand in his general direction. "I'm on it, I'm on it," she said and dug her hands into the pockets of her dress.

Calling the dead back for a little chat was easier than the average bumpkin expected. All Angela required was an intact bone—preferably the skull—a pinch of a certain ground up mixture of wild herbs and animal bone, a few choice words for the spell and the blood of a witch.

Most folks fumbled the last part. Any idiot could figure out a half-decent spell or stumble onto the right mixture but few wanted to stick around a witch long enough to collect a keepsake of blood. Most preferred witches from a distance—hung up by the neck, tied down and burnt at the stake, or drowned in the river.

Angela bent over the grave and eased the skull from its helmet. From the cloth sack she tied in her pocket, she sprinkled its forehead with her mixture. Böhnli harassed her from on high as the sky slipped deeper into night. Angela shushed him and drew a blade from her pocket.

Not a dagger, but a knife. A _good_ knife. Knives were a tool, not a weapon, good for chopping ingredients, separating bones and opening flesh—both cooked and not. And Angela kept her knife sharp. What use did a witch have for a steel weapon? All Angela required for any situation was her magic, her wits and her tools. She slid the knife from its leather sheath and it reflected back her sweaty dirt-smudged face. _Rude_ , she thought, and touched the blade to her palm.

A sharp, clean sting burned up her arm and blood rose along the slice. Böhnli gave an inquisitive call above her and Angela shook her head. Reversing the handle in her good hand, she pressed a finger to the wound and then pressed her bloodied finger to the skull. Starting at the top of the knight’s skull, she drew a line of blood from where the parietal bone met the frontal bone, over the forehead and down to the beginning of the nasal cavity.

With a whispered word, Angela straightened her spine and waited for her next conversational partner to wake up.

After witch’s blood, the real catch came in convincing the dead to hold any kind of reasonable conversation.

Besides one particularly confused fellow with a shattered temporal bone who insistently asked if she knew why his helmet was so tight, most of the dead were crotchety, useless fools.

In a whisper of feathers, Böhnli broke from the branches, circled the pockmarked ground and landed on her right shoulder; his puckered and ruined eye socket toward her and his good eye on the trees. Through her dress, his nails needled her shoulder.

Angela tipped her head into his glossy black feathers and carrion scent. “Maybe this one won’t be such a lazy, useless bastard, hmm? she asked. “All I ever hear is _‘Let me sleep,_ ’ and ‘ _I want to rest,_ ’ and _‘Why must you disturb me?'_   Ugh. Terrible attitude for protectors of the realm.”

Böhnli agreed for once. “ _Crrraaaww._ ” He turned his head around and fussed over his feathers.

At her feet, feathery tendrils began to gather, soft and insubstantial as the mists skirting the forest floor. Angela loosened a breath and went about righting herself as the spirit collected itself. She tucked her knife back in its sheath and then back in her pocket, and murmured a few words over the bloody line in her palm to nudge it closed.

Wispy blue mist coalesced around the gathering point of the skull and then the spirit sat up.

Angela leaned forward a smile on her face. “Hello, Lady Knight,” she greeted. Angela could see right through her face to the trees behind, but, well, what a _face_. Dark hair, precise jawline, surprisingly bright eyes for the dead. “You’re my prettiest conversation partner tonight, don’t you know.”

Böhnli cawed in agreement through his beakful of feathers.

The woman knight probed her insubstantial side with an insubstantial hand. “I feel... better,” she said in a voice dipped in a far-off accent. “My apologies, my lady, but I must be on my way.”

Angela lifted a hand and scratched at the spot Böhnli was fussing over. “See? All we needed to find was a woman to get a spark of motivation.”

“ _Hraaaw_.” Böhnli croaked, somewhat irritably to Angela's ear.

“You’re right, I’m sorry, that was unkind of me.” She said, “You’re a very handsome, motivated boy, aren’t you?” and gave him a good cheek scritch.

The knight was standing now, and Angela was face-to-chest with her. Despite her claims of well-being, something had smashed the knight’s breastplate into her chest and killed her.

She did not seem to mind. “My lady,” she said, “I seem to be displaced. Would you know the way back to Baron von Adler’s keep by any chance?” Bright eyes peered from beneath her helmet as she glanced around. “Have I missed the battle entirely? Did we win?”

Angela lifted her hand from Böhnli and gave her temple a fingertip massage. “Sweetie, you’re dead.”

“But... That cannot be. There are things I must do. I’m a knight of Baron Ernst von Adler. We are in the midst of the first of many challenges. There’s the rebuilding and fair trials and—”

Böhnli wriggled his tail feathers, launched himself from Angela’s shoulder and set a course through the knight’s heart.

Blurring for but a moment, the apparition gasped and stared down at herself. “But I...” she wilted, “But there are things I still must do.”

Angela waited as Böhnli circled the trees and returned to her shoulder. Her distraught knight wasted a few good minutes feeling up the dent in her insubstantial armour, lips pressed together in a grimace.

Clearing her throat to draw the knight’s attention back, Angela spoke, “Lady knight, what is your name?”

Gaze bent down to her collapsed mid-section, she replied, “Fareeha, Fareeha Amari, at your service, my lady,” and straightened.

Angela planted her elbow in her lap and rested her head on her palm. “Well, Fareeha, Fareeha Amari,” she said, ‘First—I’m a witch, so none of that _my lady_ fuss, even if it the first decent bit of respect I’ve got in years. Second—I’m a _fantastic_ witch, so I can help you with your little... Hmm, shall we say setback?” With her free hand, she gestured to all of Fareeha’s rather tall, dead apparition.

“A witch?” Fareeha frowned.

“A witch,” Angela confirmed. “Not just any witch—the Witch of the Wilds. A hard-won reputation, thank you very much."

Fareeha drew herself to full, rigid height. "Witch, it's abominable enough you have called up my spirit from its rest," she said, "but you believe you possess the power to reverse death as well?" She turned her full gaze on Angela. "Do not joke of such things."

“I never promised to reverse your death—I mean, _look_ at you, look at your feet; that is your _skull_ , Dame Fareeha—but I can help you with your little problem.” Angela tried very, very hard not to sound smug.”It’s simply a matter of stuffing all of this—” she gestured to the essence of Fareeha, “—into some adequate meat.”

“So I can live again?” Her expression softened. “Surely there’s a cost. A catch. Some clause to entrap me.”

_Ah, here we go._

“I ask only that you aid me with some of _my_ issues before you run off to meddle with your own,” Angela said. She stretched out a knot in her neck and rose to stand. Böhnli ruffled his feathers in complaint and dug into her shoulder. Although Fareeha stood in her sunken, makeshift grave, the apparition topped Angela by a good few inches. _Perfect_. “So, Lady Knight Fareeha, what doth thou say?”

 

 _ iii. _  
_The Knight, in the land of the living_

 

For the first time in a very long time, the knight woke up.

Fareeha woke slow, her mind numb and her consciousness drifting. Her last concrete memory was of pain in her chest and sticky blood at her side and the burn of smoke in her nose and the din of battle in her ears.

In contrast, now her world lay near silence. Sharp, reeking tallow candles and a musty, deep earth scent tickled her nose—was she in a dungeon? Fareeha lay still and listened: nothing but the intermittent rustle of paper and the occasional, languid sigh.

Was she captured during the battle? She recalled a deep pain in her side, but now a strange, bone-deep itch plagued her left side. Fareeha resisted the urge to scratch.

Lying there, wherever she lay, two vague notions dawned on Fareeha. The first was a dream or maybe only a memory of a dream. But she was surrounded by the trees of a forest and stood before a blond woman smudge with dirt. And a crow? Was there a crow?

Fareeha’s brow crinkled. Something about the whole situation seemed important.

But second: she was naked. Covered, at the very least, by a blanket of some sort, even if her feet stuck out into nothingness. But Fareeha was _naked_ and she was _cold_.

The nakedness was an issue of mild embarrassment, but the longer she lay there, the more the cold concerned her. Her cold arm lay crossed over her cold stomach and neither seemed to warm the other. Worse: she found it comfortable, or at least acceptable. Born far to the south, Fareeha found it hard to adjust to the bitter northern temperatures. At the threat of first frost, she layered on coats and stockings and faced the relentless snow with a dogged determination: she would suffer through it, but it could not drive her away.

And now she lay, naked and comfortably cold.

Fareeha opened her eyes, swung her legs down and sat up.

The room was dank and dim as she expected. Mismatched, age-stained bricks stretched out around Fareeha. Someone had tucked her in a narrow recess at the side of a cellar, set up like a little room. Under her feet sat a faded rug, across the room a flat-topped chest and stand-up mirror faced her. A candle fluttered beside folded dark clothes on the chest and dark spots aged the mirror. Fareeha stood, blanket clutched to her front and turned around. A limp straw mattress covered the deer-skin stretched over a low wooden cot.

Cell- _like_ , she surmised, but not a cell.

Unless she found a door locked from the outside, anyway.

She dressed from the mismatched pile of clothes on the trunk. Most of them in dark greys and browns and faded blues, and all of them musty with age. Hazy candle-light cast a strange pallor over her skin. She found a tunic and leggings which fit her comfortably enough, but the boots pinched her feet and the underthings were particularly frayed.

Fareeha lifted the candle on its dish—left to gutter and in desperate need of trimming, she noted—and ventured from her room.

She was in a world of old, stained stones and damp floors. The recess opened to a larger area, lit here and there with more neglected candles casting both golden glows and conflicting shadows. Makeshift tables of wood planks nailed to mouldering barrels filled the area. Jars of odds and ends and then some more odds Fareeha looked resolutely away from caught glints of light.

And at the edge of it all, bent over a book, sat a small blond woman. A black bird the size of her head perched on her shoulder, chewing on her hair.

Head tipped over his back, the bird dropped his lock of hair to holler at Fareeha. _“HAW._ ”

Jerking her head in a cringe, the woman lifted a hand and scooped the raven under his chest and displaced him to the table. “Nope. Nope.” She set him beside her tome. “We’ve gone over this, Böhnli—you _cannot_ sit there if you’re going to have a scream every five minutes.”

Böhnli scuttled to the edge of the table, flapped off and swooped toward Fareeha.

Fareeha stepped to the side and lifted one hand to guard her face. Böhnli swept past and circled the room. He disappeared amongst the shadows, the only evidence of his passing the wobbling flames of candles and a disturbance of damp air.

Alerted, the woman rose and turned around. “Ah, the Lady Knight wakes.”

Fareeha cast a glance over her. She wore soft thigh-high leather boots, a short dress cut low—Fareeha tried to discreetly relocate her gaze—and a cloak tossed lazily over her shoulders as a half-measure. Not the practical dress Fareeha seemed to remember her in. She’d tied her blond hair out of her face and parted her bangs mostly to the right side, the ends frazzled from a certain raven’s beak.

Intuition beginning to stir, Fareeha said, “You’re a witch.”

The witch reached up and fussed over her split bangs. “Correct, Lady Knight,” she said. “I am Angela Ziegler, Witch of the Wilds. And you are Dame Fareeha Amari.” She abandoned her bangs. “How do you feel, Fareeha Amari?”

How _did_ Fareeha feel?

Physically, in no pain or discomfort, besides the fading itch in her ribs and a lingering stiffness in her joints. Fareeha took stock of her ills: the unnervingly comfortable cold and a certain still, hollowness in her chest.

“Witch,” Fareeha began, “Why am I in your lair?” She pressed a hand over her soundless chest. “What have you done to me?”

Angela dropped back on her stool. "Tsk tsk, Fareeha, it's a _workshop_ , not a lair," she corrected. "And I've done you an incredible favour. Try to show some gratitude."

“Gratitude?” Fareeha echoed. “My skin is cold as a grave and refuses to warm to touch. My heart lies dormant within the walls of my chest.” Light bobbed around her as she gesticulated with the candle in hand. “Have you killed me? Or the opposite? Reanimated me? Am I bound to your will? To serve your every whim and pleasure? Or am I an accursed thing, a creature of the night, never to walk in the sunlight again?” Fareeha’s soul trembled at the thought. “Return me to whatever you state you found me or I’ll walk into the dawn and embrace an ashen death.”

Angela licked a finger and flipped a page of her book. “Are you finished now?”

Fareeha stood, one hand fisted at her side and the other gripped the candle’s dish until it hurt.

"First: feel free to walk about in the daylight, Fareeha. Go now if you wish. I believe it may be near mid-afternoon. You're not a ‘thing of the night.'" Angela pressed a palm on the table and rose from her stool. "And please: don't compare yourself to such. You're a work of art. I, personally, built you, with nearly your original set of bones. Fixed those nasty smashed ribs. Filled and polished out that poorly healed hip fracture and everything." She dusted her dress off. "You're not like Junkenstein's sad sack of haphazardly collected meat, jerking around on stolen lightning and borrowed time. I spent a lot of effort and blood building you." She raised a fingertip to her own right eye, "I even remembered your tattoo."

Fareeha’s voice came strained. “I didn’t ask for this half-life.”

Angela lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, but you _did_ , Fareeha,” she said. “I cannot magically stitch an unwilling soul back into its body.” She met Fareeha’s eyes. “You asked to come back.”

“I did _not_.”

“Said you had things to do,” Angela continued on. “Something about a battle and righting wrongs? You were awfully eager to jump back into some meat and rejoin the fight.”

Chills swept through Fareeha. “The battle,” she whispered. Blood and smoke and the clash of metal and _pain_. “I—” Her mind tumbled.

Her _bones_ , Angela said. How long had she laid in the dirt, dead and forgotten? Fareeha struggled to recall dying, her time beyond the veil, _anything_ at all. She turned up nothing. Only a pain in her side and a struggle against a heavy sleep, and then the witch and her raven in the dead of night.

Fareeha’s knees trembled. “I think I need to sit,” she said.

Angela swept a hand to a nearby bench and Fareeha wobbled over to sit down. She set the candle beside her.

From somewhere in the dark, feathers swished against air and the raven— _Böhnli_ —landed on Angela’s shoulder. Fareeha stared as the witch turned her attention to her shoulder and crooked a finger to scratch the bird’s cheek. The feathered little scavenger had a scarred hole in place of his left eye.

“How—how long?” Fareeha managed. “How long have I lain dead?”

Angela moved her finger and scratched Böhnli’s other cheek. “A century or so, I suppose.”

 _A century or so_. Fareeha’s mind struggled against the information. “A century or so,” she repeated, dull. “So I’ve returned for no reason. My existence is pointless.” She paused. “Did you lie to me? When I asked to return?”

Angela finally returned her attention to Fareeha. “I never lied. The only things you asked were if it were truly possible for you to come back and if there was a catch,” she said.

Tension gripped her shoulders. “Is there a catch? Am I bound to your will? Am I your servant? You have yet to answer me on these counts.”

Arms crossed, Angela replied. “You’re grounded to my physical location. If you wander too far off you might, hmm, start coming apart?” she said. “But your will is your own. Go take a walk in the sun, smell the decomposing leaves, spook some villagers—your complexion might pink up a bit more, but I wouldn’t lay any wagers down.”

Fareeha glanced down at her hands and their grey tinge, more evident than ever so close to the candlelight.

“If the battle’s over,” she began slowly, “There’s no point to my return. I have no purpose.”

“Excellent,” Angela said, “More time for you to help me.”

Surveying the witch where she stood now, Fareeha’s mind drifted to her weak impressions from the forest. Dirt smudges and a simple dress veiled an intimidating woman. In the yellow haze of candles, one-eyed omen perched upon her shoulder, surrounded by rows of dusty jars and perfumed in the scents of damp and earthy herbs and vinegar, Angela Ziegler was in her element.

“What does a witch need help with when she’s got all this at her disposal?” Fareeha waved a hand at the nearest table.

Angela beamed. “Fareeha Amari, I am beyond delighted you asked.” An intensity lit up her eyes. “You see, there’s a new von Adler lording over the land, and I’d rather like him gone.”

Fareeha gripped her hands into fists in her lap and stared down at them. The question she feared pushing an answer to teetered precariously in her mind.

Angela continued. “Come on now, Fareeha. It’s not so different from what you were up to a hundred years ago. Our methods are different, but the desired outcome is the same,” she said. “I’m a witch, not a monster. I need help with some unsavoury tasks I can’t quite manage alone, but nothing morally repugnant. I’m still human.”

Lifting her head, Fareeha met Angela’s gaze. “Who do you fight against?” Fareeha asked. “Who won, all those years ago?” If her heart were more than limp meat, she suspected it would squeeze itself into pulp in her cold chest. “Does a red or blue flag fly?”

 

 _iv. _  
_The Witch and the Knight_

 

For the first time since the night she summoned Fareeha’s spirit, Angela saw a spark of life in her eyes.

Unbidden, an authentic smile tugged the corners of her lips.

Voice lowered, Angela said, “You’ve been playing with that question a while, haven’t you?” She stroked a finger over Böhnli’s beak. “Hans von Adler is the great-great-grandson of Friedrich von Adler, victor of the Adler Civil War you’re probably intimately familiar with.” She added, “Lost his castle in the process and wound up rebuilding. But his old wine cellar refurbishes as a fabulous workshop, doesn’t it?

In the knight’s eye, the spark Angela found herself fond of flickered on the brink. Fareeha opened and shut trembling lips. In a strained voice, she asked, “So in the end, my death was in vain?”

Angela's expression softened. "Not for long, anyway," she reminded her. Angela spent an excess of time and effort finding, repairing and arranging certain parts—chiefly grave dirt and Fareeha's bones—and bled no small amount of her own blood convincing dirt to transform into flesh, and none of it was vanity. "A new dawn stands before you, Fareeha."

A moment passed; Angela continued stroking Böhnli’s beak as she waited on Fareeha.

"I don't suppose this Hans von Adler you speak of is an improvement on the seed he sprung from?" Fareeha's voice sounded stronger.

Angela shrugged and Böhnli shifted closer to her neck. Friedrich von Adler was before her time. “He’s of the old-fashioned, high-taxing sort,” she said. “Townsfolk are always on edge, farmers go without to fill his stores and they all cling to their little superstitions as people do when times are rough.”

A wry smile touched Fareeha’s lips. “Not fond of witches, it seems?”

With Böhnli shifting around on her shoulder and croaking in complaint in her ear. Angela bent to unbutton her boots. Climbing past her knees and all soft leather fitted to the shape of her legs, Angela went to a good deal of trouble to save up and travel far enough out to find a cobbler for them. Deft fingers travelling down one leg and then up the other, she worked her legs free of her treasured boots. Then, once she popped each and every button, she peeled back the leather and showed Fareeha her legs and the harsh scars streaking up them.

Legs on display and with Fareeha silent, Angela said, “When they burn witches, they light the fire from the bottom, of course.”

“I—” Fareeha began, and then stopped. Her hands worked in her lap, fists clenching and unclenching as she floundered for words.

Angela lifted a hand and soothed Böhnli with a chin tickle. "I was the village healer. Tinned salves and brewed remedies for all your day-to-day complaints. Other concoctions on hand for the bigger illnesses and wounds. Always ready to assist with a birth, be it a breach calf or your own baby." She bent and began working her boots back in place, slower this time. "But it's odd, isn't it? When a woman's over thirty and she's never married. When she's content to live alone at the edge of the village, with no goal of a husband or child. When she turns down proposal after proposal, particularly from well-established or younger men who ‘don't mind' overlooking her oddities or age." Angela finished one boot and began the next. "Everyone's fine getting along with an odd duck of a woman who's maybe a little too good at fixing something quickly or presumed unfixable, so long as she stays at the edge of the village and doesn't do anything _too_ odd." Angela finished buttoning her other boot. "Or until things start going wrong."

Angela stood and crossed her arms. Böhnli, satisfied at her stillness, nestled into the crook of her neck; she leaned her ear into his smooth feathers. "A series of misfortunes struck the village. First, it was too dry for the crops, then too wet, and then a blight set in. Then the well supplying the eastern-most farms turned up tainted. Then a baby I delivered came out stillborn. I suppose that was the last straw." She paused. "So of course, they burned me as a witch—which I am, but still, _rude_ —because when events beyond control hound us, we look for those who won’t mold to social conventions and assign blame.”

Fareeha rose, abrupt and wordless, from the bench.

Angela cupped a hand to Böhnli and pressed his face close. “Or anything a little too weird or too clever, right, Böhnli?” She brushed her lips over his eye socket. “A raven so far from the forest is surely a harbinger of doom. Nothing to do at all with the dead cows dropped at the edge of your field, hmm?” She explained, “Children take to their parent’s teachings, I suppose. They had rocks on hand instead of fire.”

Fareeha broke her silence with a creaky voice. “Angela,” she began, “Witch of the Wilds: You’ve gifted me with not only a second chance, but a cause.”

Something burned in her gaze—a spark caught into a passion. Fareeha dropped to her knees and turned her brilliant face to Angela. “I’ll help you,” she pledge and groped at her side, “I swear on my blade—”

“Lady Knight, these days your sword is a rusted stub,” Angela gently reminded her.

Clearing her throat, Fareeha squared her shoulders. “Then I swear on my soul to aid you in whatever ways I can, so long as those tasks remain morally grounded and your ultimate cause to protect the vulnerable just.” She crooked a playful smile and _oh_ , it was if the sun broke its first rays after a long, hard night. "Whatever a damned soul is worth, anyway."

Angela eased herself down and knelt with Fareeha; Böhnli cawed a chastisement in her ear but endured the drop. "Oh, Fareeha. I swear to watch over you and repair any wounds you sustain during this time." She lifted a hand and cupped her cheek. Fareeha leaned into her touch. "And besides, I believe both our souls are damned," she murmured and then brought her lips to Fareeha's and sealed their pact.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Böhnli is a Swiss term of endearment: "little bean."


End file.
